


Pieces

by zinjadu



Series: And not to yield [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Horizon (Mass Effect), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24607303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Kaidan Alenko tries to pick up the pieces of his life after Zahra Shepard dies, and two years pass in a blur.  But one moment on Horizon breaks things all over again.Can be read by itself.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko & David Anderson, Kaidan Alenko/Citadel Doctor, Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Series: And not to yield [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604602
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	Pieces

They don’t find her body.

Kaidan sits in the front row of her funeral with the other survivors of the Normandy. The coffin Anderson speaks next to is empty. Her service photo is framed and set on top of it surrounded by a spray of white lilies. He doesn’t even know what flowers she liked, or if she liked any at all.

_ “Some girls get flowers, I get powerbars. I know what I like better.” Then her lips curved in a grin and she pulled his head to hers. _

Her footlocker arrives while he’s hiding at his parent’s house.

At first he doesn’t know what he was signing for. It’s a footlocker like any other. His had been lost with the Normandy, but hers had never made it on board. Stuck somewhere in some customs port as she’d raced to her new posting. When he sees her name in block letters, he has to sit down and remind himself to breathe until his mother comes home and finds him on the edge of panic.

_ “Has all the stuff from Mindoir. Even Mom’s cookbook. Not that she could cook. Or I can.” _ _ He offered to make her anything she wanted from it when they had access to a real kitchen, and she’d asked for shakshuka. _

It takes him a week to work up the courage to see what’s inside.

Her mother’s cookbook sits on top of battered paperbacks of classic adventure stories. There’s a small datadisc with gigs of music that her father loved. There’s report cards from her sisters, telling the tale of clever girls lost too soon. Of her there is little. A few family photos that traces the life of a brash girl growing up into a coltish young woman. His fingertips brush her face with those grey eyes and her hawkish nose that she hated but he adored.

_ “Kay, its sweet that you think I’m pretty, but _ —”  _ He had refused to listen to the rest and had waxed rhapsodic about her nose until she hit him upside the head with a pillow. _

Unread messages pile up.

He catalogs everything. But it’s the  _ mezuzah _ that holds his fascination. It wasn’t even put in a case, just tossed in with the rest like an errant afterthought. He had to look up what it was, and he could just see her pressing her fingertips to this stone day after day by sheer habit. This was something she had touched, had held, had kept. The backing had been torn off, the blessing lost somewhere along the way. He fixes it, finds a rabbi who gives him a blessing on a scrap of paper for it—it’s the first thing he’s left the house for—and puts it in a nice case before settling it back with the rest of her things. Like maybe she’ll want it later.

_ “Mom was Jewish, so technically that means I am too, but I never was really into it _ .”  _ He listened as she told him about her family. Karima found herself in art and dance and faith. Norah lived for tinkering and turning over every stone. She said she’d never talked so much about them to anyone before. _

Anderson is the one who kicks his ass into gear.

There’s still work to be done, and just because she’s gone doesn’t mean the threat she fought is going to go away. He’s faced with a choice, and in the end he chooses to pack away her things and store the footlocker in the attic. Not because he wants to, but because he has to. Because if he’s going to honor her, he can’t wallow. His dad helps him lug it up the stairs, and the dust gets into his eyes. Dad leaves after pulling him into a rough hug, and then he digs out the  _ mezuzah _ . It’s like holding a piece of her.

_ “You are far too comfy for my own good, Alenko _ .” _ He had hummed, making his chest rumble in a way he knew she liked, and she protested and said they had to get out of bed and work. But he’d talked her into staying just a little bit longer. _

The Alliance obstacle course north of Vancouver keeps him occupied.

The squads are being built, covert squads, all of them biotics, and all of them trained to get behind enemy lines and unleash hell. And be gone by the time the fireworks go off. Eventually, he meets the kids, all eager and wide eyed and talking in hushed whispers because he’d known Commander Shepard. The next day he’s on the course again, because it's the only thing that keeps him from going back to the orchard and drowning in himself in her memories. Then he throws himself into the work, into deployment and recon and his life revolves around not giving himself time to think. Until he looks up and it's been a year.

_ “Sometimes. It’s stupid, but I forget that we haven’t known each other all that long.” He’d forget, too, and he said he didn’t think it was stupid at all.  _

Slowly, going through the motions turns into living again.

His friends from basic nudge him out of his apartment, make him eat real food and laugh. He never talks to anyone from the Normandy, though. He tried to talk to Garrus once, but turned away before the turian could see him. Eventually the persistent nagging from his friends wears him down. The doctor is handsome, a good man. A patient man, who gives him more time than he really deserves. Gentle. She hadn’t been gentle. She’d been hard edges and a wild heart.

_ “This is living, isn’t it?!” He grit his teeth and tried not to pray out loud as the Mako dropped. The vehicle slammed into the planet, but her eyes had been bright and beautiful and he thought he could handle a little wild for someone with eyes like that. _

She’s alive.

His world stops again.

Her hair is shorn, buzzed short, and he can see the heat-red lines of wires under her skin. It’s the same skin and arched black eyebrows. Same hawkish nose and eyes as grey as the Pacific in winter. 

His world breaks.

_ I had put you away!  _ he wants to scream at her.  _ Put you away and moved on! You have no right to stand here and act like I didn’t die with you! _

There’s no way she’d been really dead, if this really is her standing in front of him. They’d never found her body. His mind spins out scenarios and terrifying visions of a fool lieutenant who fell hard and fast for his commander who hadn’t quite felt the same way. Had gone under cover and hadn’t cared enough to send him a single damned word. Or that she’d been one of _ them _ all along, stringing him behind her to throw him off her trail. 

_ “Kay…” He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she sighed her release, body arching up against his. _

The message sits there, waiting to be sent.

The  _ mezuzah _ sits on his desk, the one piece of her he kept with him. Hadn’t been able to let go of. The doctor had grown tired of competing with a ghost months ago, so there was no one to coax him away from the console.

But she isn’t a ghost, if she ever was—the living couldn’t haunt you. Could they?

Did she know? Know that her footlocker would have come to him? He’d been made her emergency contact and without a next of kin, her meagre store of possessions had been given to him. He wants to trust her. Wants to believe her. But his squads had found too much in raided Cerberus bases to believe that  _ nothing _ was going on. There isn’t enough information, and no way to tell the truth from the lies, no matter how much his heart wants to follow her back into hell.

He hits send.

_ Just… take care _ .


End file.
